The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic “democracy” in Egypt as part of
the New World Order*
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TAKIS FOTOPOULOS

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that the Muslim Brotherhood’s
rise to power in Egypt (as well as in Tunisia before it) has
been engineered by the transnational elite, with the help of the
local elites and the US-dependent local armies, since the
previous client autocratic regimes were politically bankrupt and
clearly incapable of imposing the “economic restructuring”
required by neoliberal globalization without the occurrence of
serious social turbulence. The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to
power will secure the integration of the countries concerned
into the New World Order of neoliberal globalization and
representative “democracy” in a new form of more sophisticated
client regime based on Islamic “democratization,” whereby all
the rituals and paraphernalia of “democracy” are present. The
first part of this article deals with the Muslim Brotherhood’s
rise to power and attempts to explain why it was chosen as the
main instrument of the New World Order in the Middle East. The
second part puts forward the case that the Muslim Brotherhood’s
rise to power represents a new form of “democratic” client
regime in the Middle East, in place of the autocratic client
regimes which had been dominant in the area since the end of the
Second World War.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the oldest Islamic organization, won a
major victory in the 2011-12 Egyptian parliamentary elections, with
47.2% of the vote and 235 seats out of 498, whereas another, even
more conservative Islamic organization, the Salafists, took around
30% of the vote and 123 seats.[1]
Thus, if we add Salafists in the Islamist group of power, as we
should, given the high degree of ideological and political affinity
between the two organizations, conservative Islamists seemed to
control between them about three quarters of the electorate.
However, although nobody could doubt the power of the MB, there is a
striking discrepancy as regards the voting patterns of the
countryside, where most of the peasantry (characterized by very
high rates of illiteracy and the associated with it high degree of
religious irrationality) live, versus those of the main urban
centers, Cairo and Alexandria, where almost a fifth of the country’s
population and many, if not most, of the workers, self-employed, and
employed in the services, as well as of the country’s unemployed
and underemployed, are concentrated. As regards illiteracy in
particular, Egypt has a very high illiteracy rate, as shown by the
very low literacy rate among adults (15 and older), which amounts to
75% of the male population (vs. a world average of 87%) and 58% of
the female population (vs. 76% world average).[2]

Concerning the voting patterns, the Brotherhood, following its
victory in the parliamentary elections it went on to win also the
June 2012 presidential elections, with its candidate, Mohamad Morsi,
elected as the first
“democratic” President of Egypt (who studied
and taught in the California university system before returning to
Egypt to enter politics, winning election as an MP in 2000), but by
only 51% of the vote. The victory of the MB in both the
parliamentary and the presidential elections was hardly surprising,
given that it is Egypt’s best-organized opposition group, which has
an estimated 600,000 members.[3]
Yet, there were reports and witnesses who testified that MB candidates were blackmailing and bribing poor Egyptians with food
and, as an RT correspondent reported, people in the Nile Delta were
being offered bribes of a few dollars and a meal to vote for MB
candidates.[4]Similar
reports emergedabout the very recent constitutional
referendum.[5]However, even more significant than the reports about
irregularities are the voting patterns, both as regards the very
high and growing with every election abstention rates but also with
regards to the long term trend in the MB vote itself.

Thus, there were four main electoral contests following the January
25 “Revolution” in 2011. First, the March 19 constitutional
referendum (which put a constitution temporarily into effect until a
new one was drafted), which had a turnout of 41%, then the
parliamentary elections with an overall turnout (for all phases) of
59%, followed by the June presidential elections with a turnout of
52% and finally the December 2012 referendum on the new constitution
drafted by the MB, where the turnout was the lowest ever: 33%,[6] forcing even the establishment Economist to comment sarcastically
“not much of an endorsement for a constitution promoted as the
Brothers’ crowning achievement and as a blueprint for the country’s
future”[7]!
A definite growing trend of indifference for representative
“democracy” could clearly be established from these figures.
Furthermore, the results show a clear trend of a diminishing MB
appeal to the electorate. As Hani Shukrallah stressed recently, “in
the space of a few months, between the parliamentary elections (28
November 2011 - 11 January 2012) and the first round of the
presidential elections (23-24 May 2012), the Brotherhood had
managed to lose over half its electoral base ― nearly seven million
votes”[8].
For the author this is far from surprising since, as he aptly
pointed out,

A Brotherhood in power that is happy to collaborate with the US
and Israel in fighting terrorism in Sinai; speaks of strategic
ties with Washington; signs a typically stringent loan deal with
the IMF; shows astonishing ineptitude and lack of vision; fails
to deliver on any of its own promises, let alone the promises of
the revolution; and is hailed by the US and Europe for its role
in “containing” Hamas and safeguarding Israel’s security is a
Brotherhood that has lost whatever mystique it once had.[9]

However, what is the most important conclusion that could be drawn from the above election results is that the working classes and the
urban poor in general have not favored the MB. This is confirmed
both by the presidential elections and the referendum results. Thus,
in Cairo, Morsi received only 42.3% of the votes in the presidential
elections in June, whereas in the referendum vote, in December
2012, the “yes” vote (for the MB constitution) was again only 43.1%.
As regards Alexandria, in the first round of the presidential
election, the city surprised many by voting for Nasserist candidate
Hamdeen Sabbahi instead of Shafiq or Morsi, despite the fact that
the city is considered the Salafists’ hometown and Islamists’ stronghold. In the referendum, where all Islamists in the city
joined in voting “yes” for the constitution, they managed to get a
55.6% “yes” vote. Finally, in the Gharbiya governorate, home to the
industrial cities of Mahalla Al-Kubra and Tanta, which as we have
seen in previous chapters have a long history of workers’ struggles,
particularly against the Mubarak regime, the “yes” vote at 47.87 per
cent was beaten by the “no” vote.[10]

As one could expect, the
“natural” favorites of the transnational
elite, i.e. the liberals, the Facebook Youth candidates and the
likes, were all but obliterated in the above contests. The liberal
New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc coalition came third and fourth
respectively in the parliamentary elections, whereas
“The Revolution
Continues” coalition, dominated by youth groups at the forefront of
the protests that toppled Mubarak (i.e. the Facebook Youth),
attracted less than a million votes and took just seven of the 498
seats up for grabs in the lower house[11].
As a result, the liberals, the middle classes, and the Facebook
youth did not manage to promote as a presidential candidate any of
their favorite candidates. Thus, neither Moussa nor ElBaradei
managed to make it to the final round, although the former (who
worked as foreign minister under Hosni Mubarak), as secretary
general of the Arab League played a crucial role in inviting NATO to
massacre the people of Libya, while the latter (who pulled out
early of the presidential race, presumably assessing as nil his
chances of success, particularly after his outing by his own
movement as a western stooge!)[12]),
was considered “a top choice for a lot of liberals”[13]. No wonder that, the first round of presidential elections left
Egyptians with a choice between an Islamist candidate and an
ex-prime minister from the Mubarak era, prompting the London Times
to write in an editorial that “these are not the
candidates, and that is not the choice, that Western governments
would have preferred.”[14]

The events following the election of the Muslim Brotherhood
candidate as president showed clearly the character of the new
regime as one based on Islamic
“democratization,” whereas the
liberal forces of the
“revolution” were simply passed by.
Indicatively, when the main organ of the international
“liberal
Left,” the
Guardian, raised the question “Who will the new
president choose as a prime minister?” the obvious for it answer was
“A non-Brotherhood figure ― Mohamed ElBaradei is being mooted
―
could signal pluralism and help deflect heat on the economy”.[15]
But, ElBaradei was not going to be the new PM. Instead, Hisham
Qandil was appointed as PM, a US-educated engineer who was water
resources minister in the last military-appointed cabinet and not a
member of Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party (FJP),
although, as his BBC profile states, “is
believed to be religious and once said he had grown his beard as a
sign of piety
“in line with the Sunnah”
― the Prophet Muhammad’s
words and actions”[16].
Qandil, in turn, appointed a cabinet of mainly technocrats (only a handful
from the FJP).

Political Islamism and the Left

However, before we proceed to examine the politics of Egyptian
Islamists, a brief digression is needed to avoid any
misunderstandings or distortions about my stand on Islamism, as a
political, as well as a religious, ideology. Clearly, my stand
against Egyptian Islamism does not arise out of the modern brand of
political correctness promoted by the dictates of the transnational
elite, which implies a selective rejection of religious
irrationalism, according to the basic criterion of whether it is
friendly or not towards the New World Order (NWO) based on
neoliberal globalization and representative “democracy” that the
transnational elite has been imposing by economic or military force
all over the world since the emergence of globalization and the
parallel collapse of the Soviet bloc . Thus, religious irrationalism
based on Judaism or Christianity is today praised by the media, as
is also Saudi Arabian Islamism, or even Al Qaida Islamism ― as long
as it fights for the
“right” causes, i.e. against communism in
Afghanistan in the past, or against the anti-NWO movements in Libya
or Syria at present. Although the term
“Islamism” itself, as well as
its nature as a political ideology, is controversial, my stand on
Islamism is clearly based on my general stand against any kind of
irrational ideology
― which includes of course religion that
expresses irrationality par excellence. Politics, in the
classical sense of collective self-determination, can only be based
on democratic rationalism, as expressed through genuine direct
democracy (or I what I call Inclusive Democracy, as opposed to the
travesty of democracy called representative “democracy”), and not on
any kind of irrational beliefs, as I tried to show elsewhere.[17]
In fact, whenever the decisions of even a traditionally anti-NWO
Islamic movement like the Iranian movement were based on irrational
belief, they were criminally wrong. An indication of this is what
Ayatollah Khatami told a Friday prayer gathering in Tehran during
the Egyptian uprising, in view of the foreseeable at the time taking
over by the Muslim Brotherhood: “An Islamic Middle East is being
formed. A new Middle East is being shaped around Islam, religion and
religious democracy.”[18]
In other words what matters, according to this view, is Islamism
itself and not its stand towards the NWO of neoliberal
globalization! Not surprisingly, the Iranians were soon to have a
nasty surprise by Morsi and the MB in the Tehran conference of the
non-aligned movement, as we shall see below.

In my view,
Islamist movements must be supported by the Left, as it has always
been the case in the past, as long as they are part of national
liberation movements, or anti-New World Order movements. National
liberation, which nowadays mainly takes the form of breaking with
the NWO,is a preconditionfor any social liberation
and the struggle for this goal should unite everybody wishing to
fight for it, irrespective of sex, race, ethnic or cultural
differences, including religious ones. However, neither national
liberation nor, even more so, social liberation, can ever be
achieved with the help of the very elites against whom both types of
struggle are fought. Therefore, any Islamic movements cooperating
with the transnational elite and its client regimes, in order to
overthrow a non-client regime ―
even if it is an authoritarian one ―
are enemies of the peoples, as they put their religion above the
struggle for national liberation and against the NWO, and, as such,
should be treated accordingly by the struggling peoples and by the
antisystemic Left. Of course, the degenerate “Left,” which in fact
does not fight for systemic change but only for human rights and
“freedoms,” does not also have anything to do with this struggle.
This is why this “Left,” indirectly, backed the criminal campaigns
of the transnational elite against the Libyan and Syrian peoples
when it supported the so-called
“rebels” who were armed and financed
by the transnational elite and its client regimes. The criminal
role of this degenerate ”Left” (which sometimes even claims to be
“Marxist” or
“anarchist”!) should therefore be revealed, as it
clearly plays, either objectively, or sometimes even deliberately,
the role of justifying ideologically the NWO and the transnational
elite, as well as its wars against any resisting peoples.

Why the Muslim Brotherhood was chosen as the main instrument of the
New World Order in the Middle East?

Going back to the Egyptian Islamists, the first issue with respect
to their movement refers to what is exactly the nature of their
movement and, related to it, why did the transnational elite trust
them so much, so that they did not have any qualms about triggering
the replacement of an autocratic client regime with a new form of
client regime expressing Islamic
“democratization” and based,
mainly, on the Muslim Brotherhood. This issue is raised because the
emergence of Islamic
“democratization” in Egypt, clearly, did not
happen by some sort of historic accident. It is obvious that the
transnational elite (and particularly the US based part of it), had
known very well, at least since 2004, who would take over in Egypt
in case free elections of any sort were going to be allowed there.
We should not forget that this was the year when Mubarak was forced
by the US elite to allow a degree of freedom in the parliamentary
elections and, consequently, the Muslim Brotherhood had elected more
than half of its candidates in the areas it contested! But in fact,
it was since 2005, as we saw in the last chapter, that the US
campaign for
“democracy” in Egypt began, a campaign which culminated
with the election of Obama in the Presidency, who, even before his
official inauguration, was busy organizing meetings with Egyptian
activists of the Facebook youth at the end of 2008, with the
explicit aim of
“regime change.”

However, to understand the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood movement
we have to go back to its historical development, particularly in
the post-1948 period. Historically, the movement, which was founded
by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, in the aftermath of the 1919-20
revolution and the continuing struggle against the reactionary bloc
(comprising the monarchy, the great landlords, and the rich
peasants), was formed with the active support of the British embassy
and the royal Palace (controlled by the British) and was inspired
“by
“Islamist” thought in its most backward
“Salafist” version of
Wahhabism, as formulated by Rachid Reda ― i.e. the most reactionary,
antidemocratic and against social progress version of the newborn
“political
Islam”.”[19]The movement initially aimed simply to spread Islamic morals and
good works, but soon became involved in politics, particularly in
the fight to rid Egypt of British colonial control and cleanse it of
all Western influence ― although what they meant by this was cultural
influence and not economic one as well! Their main aim has always
been the Islamization of Egypt’s political and cultural institutions
and the promotion of sharia as the basis for legislation. This is
summed up by its main slogan used worldwide: “Islam is the
solution”.After its launching in 1928, branches were set up throughout the
country ― each running a mosque, a school and a sporting club. As a
result, also, of this social activity its membership grew rapidly so
that, by the late 1940s, the movement is believed to have had as
many as two million followers in Egypt, while its ideas had spread
across the Arab world.

The Brotherhood has always made pragmatic alliances with regimes
―
those of King Farouk from 1936; the Free Officers under Nasser (who
ousted Farouk in 1952); and Sadat from 1970 (who used the Brothers
against the Nasserites and the left).[20]
The tactical alliance with the Free Officers however was inevitably
short lived as they had divergent political goals: the Muslim
Brotherhood believed in the establishment of a Koranic state,
whereas the Nasserite officers in a nationalist, secularist one. No
wonder that a failed attempted assassination of Nasser in 1954 led
to the brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and the
imprisonment and sentencing to death of Sayyid Qutb, one of its
leading ideologues, which led to the jihadist movement. A year after
Qutb’s death in 1966, Ayman al-Zawahiri, aged 16 at the time, set up
a jihadist cell at his school and invited a few friends to join.In May 2011, Zawahiri became the leader of Al-Qaida,
following the murder of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces.In fact, according to Fawaz A Gerges,[21]
“the birth of the jihadist movement cannot be understood without
reference to this great clash between the Muslim Brotherhood and
Nasser’s forces”.

The Brotherhood’s relation with Western powers had started early on
and even during the Second World War, the British viewed the
Brotherhood as a possible counterweight against the secular
nationalist party, the Wafd, and the communists.[22]
But it was in the post-Second World War period, and particularly
since 1946-1948, when two crucial events took place, almost at the
same time, which marked the post-war period in the Middle East and
the entire world:

the beginning of the Cold War in 1946 and

the establishment of the Zionist Israeli state in 1948 on
occupied Palestinian land.

Both events and, particularly, the latter functioned as catalysts,
in the aftermath of the humiliating defeat of Arab regimes at the
hands of Zionists, for the emergence, on the one hand, of the
secularist Arab nationalist movement (spearheaded, in Egypt, by the
Free Officers movement under Nasser and, in Libya, by Colonel
Gaddafi), and, on the other, the strengthening of the Islamist
movement headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which proclaimed that
“the only way to restore the former glory of the Islamic world was
to return to fundamentalist Islam”.[23]
At the same time, the needs of the Cold War first (and of the NWO at
present) have led to the creation of an unholy alliance between
Islamists and the West, through the client Gulf regimes. Here is how
Lizzie Phelan describes the process[24]:

Money from Saudi Arabia helped sustain the movement when other
Arab governments, especially Egypt’s, moved against them. And
thanks to the Cold War, the Muslim Brotherhood would draw energy
from the global crusade against communism. Its combination of
elite insider politics and underground violent militancy marked
the true start of what we now call “political Islam.” The
Islamist regimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan that
came to power beginning in the late 1970s were the direct result
of the groundbreaking work done by Banna, Ramadan and their
allies. (…) The strategists who build the NATO, Baghdad Pact, and
CENTO alliances, the Rapid Deployment Force, and the U.S.
Central Command attached extraordinary importance to securing
the Gulf. (…) To defeat the nationalists, and to build a tier of
nations aligned in opposition to the Soviet Union, the United
States would reach out to the Islamic Right.

A large part of the Brotherhood’s support rests on the welfare
services, health clinics and computer training for young people that
it provides.Yet,the economic policies themselves of
the Muslim Brotherhood, at least since the mid 2000s, have been the
usual mix of neoliberal globalization policies (i.e. support for
privatization and gradually opening Egypt to global free trade),
which were complemented by the ideology of globalization, namely,
human rights and representative “democracy.” In this sense, the
Muslim Brotherhood was the perfect Egyptian candidate for the
transnational elite, so that it could implement Egypt’s
“democratization” and its full integration into the NWO.

As Samir Amin also stressed about the historical role of the
Brotherhood:

The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to a market-based economic
system of complete external dependence. They are in reality a
component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their
stand against large strikes by the working class and against the
struggles of poor peasants to hold on to their lands. So the
Muslim Brotherhood are
“moderate” only in the double sense that
they refuse to present any sort of economic and social program,
thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal
policies, and that they are submissive de facto to the
enforcement of U.S., control over the region and the world. They
thus are useful allies for Washington (and does the US have a
better ally than their patron, the Saudis?), which now vouches
for their
“democratic credentials.”[25]

Finally, in view of the above about the history of the MB and its
stand with respect to neoliberal globalization and the present huge
campaign of the transnational and Zionist elites to redesign the
Middle East political map, one could understand why there is an
obvious (unholy) alliance between the Islamist winners on the one
hand and the losers in the liberal camp who have been eliminated
through the electoral process on the other. This, despite the fact
that the direct flag carriers of ideological globalization are those
who, through the Facebook Youth, the NGOs and so on, tried hard to
control the uprising according to the principles of ideological
globalization (see chapter 3). Here is how El Baradei accurately
described this alliance:[26]

I predict the Islamists will embrace other political factions,
support free markets and be pragmatic. It is time to set aside
our differences. We need the strength of a unified Egypt:
ensuring judicial independence, protecting media freedom and
civil society, and tapping Egypt’s potential as an emerging
market. With the lack of a democratic framework, I recently
bowed out of the presidential race. I believe I can contribute
more if I am not wading through the political muck and hope to
help groom the youth that triggered the revolution so they can
take over the
leadership of the country in the next election. (…) Despite the
ups and downs of the past year I believe with all my heart that
our revolution will succeed.

In fact, ElBaradei knew very well that Egypt, left to MB and
Salafists, was very much in safe hands (from the transnational and
local elites’ point of view). As we saw above, both the MB and
Salafists belong to the sort of Islamists who, historically, have
never had anything to do with the anti-New World Order kind of
political Islamism (as expressed e.g. by the Iranian regime), and
have no objection at all to the full integration of Egypt into the
NWO of neoliberal globalization and representative “democracy”
― as
long as they are left free to preach and practice their irrational
beliefs, as all religious organizations all over the world do.
Naturally, the elites are happy to let them do so, as long as they
do not bother them in perpetuating a system securing the
concentration of economic and political power in their hands! And
this is exactly the case of the MB, which is not only an
enthusiastic supporter of neoliberal globalization but has already
showed that it can function as a client regime of the transnational
and Zionist elites, with respect to their present systematic attempt
to effect
“regime change” in Syria
― as it did also with respect to
the massacre of the Libyan people by the same elites which it
directly or indirectly supported. In fact, one of the main aims of
the establishment of a new kind of client regimes based on Islamic
“democratization” in both Tunisia and Egypt was exactly the
facilitation of regime change in both Libya and Syria, which, unlike
in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, required external intervention to
be effected. In this light, the present conflict between the secular
front under Baradei and the Islamic front under Morsi is just an
“internal affair,” as far as the transnational elite is concerned,
given that both the MB and many within
the secular front (liberals, the
middle classes,
the
Facebook Youth etc.) will serve its strategic and economic aims in
the Middle East perfectly well. Thus, although a liberal regime
would of course be preferable, the transnational elite accepts that,
for the short and medium term, Egypt, like
the rest of the client regimes in the area (the
Tunisian
as well as
the newly added Libyan
one,
to be followed by the one planned for
Syria) need
to go
through a transitional process of “Islamic democratization,” so that
they may
become fully integrated into the New World Order of neoliberal
globalization and representative “democracy.”

As regards Salafists in particular, they seem to be even worse than
the Muslim Brotherhood. As Benjamin Schett wrote in a significant
recent article on Salafism/Wahhabism:

Wahhabi ideology serves U.S. interests for several reasons.
Its followers’ archaic perception of society makes them reject
any kind of progressive social change. Therefore they are well
equipped to push back socialist, secular or nationalist
movements, whose independence-oriented policies are a threat to
America’s geopolitical agenda. Although Wahhabism certainly is
not representative of the majority of Sunni Muslims, Wahhabi
Muslims are Sunni extremists, which causes them to maintain an
extremely hostile stance towards Shi’te Islam.[27]

One could even go further and assume that one reason (though not the
only one) for which the MB, through its affiliates in Syria and
Libya, has directly or indirectly supported the criminal campaigns
of the transnational elite against the peoples of these two
countries, was exactly that it was well aware that its support for
the crucial campaigns of the transnational and Zionist elites in
Libya and Syria was a condition that it had to meet in order to be
allowed by them to take power in Egypt. In other words, this was the
only way in which an Islamist Egypt could avoid, for instance, the
fate of Islamist Algeria, where Islamists were massacred by the
transnational elite, through its proxy in the local army, exactly
because their victory in the 1991 elections was not approved by
them. In fact, in Algeria, the army intervened as soon as the
Islamist victory became obvious when the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of the
country’s first multi-party elections. In contrast, in Egypt, the
army not only did not intervene to stop the Islamic victory but its
leadership was also ousted immediately after it, in effect, by the
US elite on which it was dependent. It will be hard to believe that
it was just a coincidence that, a few weeks before Morsi’s soft coup
against the generals, Hilary Clinton was in Cairo, in her first
visit to Egypt after the Morsi victory, and declared that the army should return to the barracks, “to a purely national
security role”![28]

Of course, the
image promoted by the media of the transnational elite at the time
was one of a strong new president who purged the army from
pro-Mubarak elements but it is very surprising indeed that even
experienced anti-Zionist Middle East analysts like James Petras, to
whom I frequently referred in this book as one of the honourable
exceptions in the Left today, would have fallen into the same trap
not only crediting Morsi for purging the army from pro-Mubarak
elements but even going as far as supporting the new client regime
in Egypt for the sake of supporting the newly established
“democratic” institutions, as a better alternative to the previous
Mubarak regime. However, as regards the sort of “democracy” being
established in Egypt at the moment, I hope that the present chapter
will help in forming a more perceptive view on the matter, whereas
as regards the risk of return of the previous regime, as I showed in
the previous chapters, it is almost non-existent. Furthermore,
considering the MB regime as a kind of involuntary hostage of the
transnational elite (as if the MB in general and Morsi in particular
have ever shown any significant divergence of views ―
or willingness to adopt alternative policies, as we shall see next
―
from those promoted by the transnational elite!) could well lead, as
it did in this case, to what I consider a fundamental error, i.e. to
call for the Left to support Morsi from an imaginary risk of an army
takeover:

In the case of Egypt, secular liberals and leftists should have
joined with the Morsi regime to oust the remnants of the brutal
Mubarak regime. They should have supported the elected
legislature, even while challenging Morsi’s pacts with the IMF,
the US, EU and Israel. Instead, secular liberals appear to
agree with the regime in its reactionary socio-economic
policies.[29]

Naturally, the possibility of an army takeover cannot be ruled
out ― but for the opposite reasons than those mentioned by Petras.
Given that, as I showed in the previous chapters, Mubarak would
never have fallen had he been supported by the US-controlled
Egyptian generals and that since his fall the army had plenty of
opportunities to intervene (the last one being just a few months
ago when the “strong” man Morsi carried out, supposedly single
handed, a heroic soft coup against the army!), but it never did so,
there are obviously other reasons that have to be examined in order
to interpret the present situation in Egypt. In this framework, an
army takeover could indeed take place in the future but only if the
Islamic “democratization” model fails to contain popular anger
against the policies of neoliberal globalization to be imposed by
the transnational elite through the IMF and the EU, and not because
the pro-Mubarak forces would attempt a return. The Mubarak model of
client regime has been dead and buried since the “revolution” of
January 2011 ―
apart perhaps from some remnants in the
judiciary ―
when the transnational elite decided to oust Mubarak who
was already politically bankrupt and replace this obsolete model of clientelism with a synchronised one based on Islamic
“democratization” in the redesigned Middle East. Furthermore, the
millions of poor, the unemployed and the marginalized would be
hardly concerned about the risk of losing the supposed freedom that
liberal “democracy” (particularly of the Islamic kind!) offers to
them, as they are well aware that, as soon their struggle creates a
real danger to the local and foreign elites, even this freedom will
be effectively (and “legally”) undermined, through the various laws
they have in their arsenal, on top of the most effective ever
technology of state violence available to them, to protect public
order. This is, for instance what the peoples in the peripheral
European countries discovered in the last two years or so when every
time they began revolting against the savage economic war launched
against them by the local and foreign elites, then, in case they
were protesting peacefully, their massive protests were simply
ignored, whereas every time they had to resort to defensive
collective violence against the samurai of the security forces they
were violently suppressed. Needless to add that in the latter case
nobody in the West (governments, mass media etc.) was the least
concerned about these blatant cases of “regimes turning against
their own peoples” ― this being presumably a practice forbidden only
to rogue regimes.

Of course there also many other indications about the real role of
the MB, which clearly show that this role, far from being enforced
by the transnational elite on the organization, it was in fact a
voluntary decision by it. Thus, one of the first things Morsi did as
soon as he took over was to reassure the transnational elite of his
intentions, telling the Wall Street Journal that his foreign
policy priority was a “strategic partnership” with the US, with the
aim of gaining access to international credit markets and global
legitimacy![30]
Similarly, he rushed to reassure the Gulf client states by
dismissing as “delusional, slanderous and baseless” the suggestion
that the Brotherhood had direct relations with Iran or Hezbollah,
its Lebanese ally. Thus, as Morsi pledged immediately after he was
elected: “We will never stand with the forces which threaten
friendly countries in the Arabian Gulf”[31]
(by which of course he meant the most reactionary regimes around,
i.e. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the likes! In fact, Morsi in
his inauguration speech not only formally committed the Muslim
Brotherhood to the Camp David Accords but also to the transnational
elite’s campaign for regime change in Syria: “We emphasize the state
of Egypt's commitment to international treaties and
agreements. (…) Spilling the Syrian people’s blood has to stop. We will
exert efforts to achieve that in the near future.”[32]

No wonder also that the Egyptian elite celebrated Morsi’s victory
with a significant rise in the stock exchange index. After all,
Morsi’s five-point plan for his first 100 days in office was clear:
to deal with the problems of traffic, security, street cleanliness,
bread and fuel![33]
This, in a country in which, as Seumas Milne, a liberal Left
analyst, pointed out, about 40% of the population lives on less than
two dollars a day, and the IMF is hovering in the wings with the
kind of structural adjustment reforms that can only make things
worse for those at the sharp end. Those include privatizations the
Brotherhood has pledged to continue and expand. No wonder the MB won
plaudits from US officials for saying “all the right things on the
economic side”, despite its social programs.[34]

What is less self-explanatory is that the first formal
congratulations to Morsi from abroad came from Hamas. Although this
is not surprising given that Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian MB, it is still difficult to explain how
Hamas, as a result presumably of its close links with the Egyptian
MB, ended up supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria that makes up a
significant part of the anti-Assad armed insurrection, despite the
huge (financial and military) help that Hamas and Palestinian
resistance in general received from the Ba’athist regime all these
years! In other words, Hamas, indirectly, supports now also the
transnational and Zionist elites’ plans in the Middle East, which,
in case they are successful in changing the non-client regimes in
Syria and Iran with client ones, they will inevitably lead to a
Zionist solution on the Palestinian issue! The present massive
expansion of Israeli settlements which precludes any idea of a two-state solution should have given Hamas an idea of what this
solution will be about, at the time that the
“fearless” Morsi and
the MB gang do not even dare to break completely any diplomatic
relations and demand from the UNSC to take real action against the
racist Zionists, instead of the present verbal criticisms of Israel
which are of course completely ignored by them. Furthermore, the
Gaza incidents in August, which played a significant role with
respect to the Islamist
“coup” against the Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces (SCAF), confirmed in an undisputed way the client
nature of the Muslim Brotherhood regime and do not allow any scope
for continuing Hamas misunderstandings on it. As Abayomi Azikiwe, director of Pan-African News Wire from Detroit
rightly stated recently, “we’re seeing that the siege on Gaza has
become tighter than ever before”[35]
i.e. what used to be considered by most peoples in the world as “the
largest open-air prison in the world,” which was created by Zionists
and maintained with the support of the Mubarak regime, has become an
even worse prison, thanks to the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi!

Needless to add that Hamas’s supposed military “victory,” following
the latest Zionist massacre in Gaza, and Morsi’s related diplomatic
“victory” (for which he was explicitly congratulated by the entire
transnational elite and its media ― although only implicitly by the
Zionist elite, for obvious reasons) were just fiascos yet again, if
not clear acts of treachery against the Palestinian people. Thus,
Hamas’s military victory consisted in the fact that it was shown to
be capable of launching a few long-range missiles (which would best
be described as more developed fireworks!) into the suburbs of Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem, giving Israel the chance to test its
anti-missile system successfully. In the process, not only did Hamas
had to pay a very high price in terms of the amount of Palestinian
casualties it suffered vs. the minimal number of Israeli casualties
suffered, but also the Zionists had the chance to destroy most of
Hamas’s infrastructure, rendering it incapable of launching any
major offensive (even if it wanted to!) once the imminent
“big
battle” against Syria and Iran begins. At the same time, Morsi’s
diplomatic “victory” consisted in the fact that he negotiated a
truce between the two sides, his big “achievement” being to get the
Israelis to stop their offensive against Gaza, while at the same
time forcing Hamas to abandon its right to resistance against the
Zionist occupiers! At the same time, Morsi did not even dare to open
the Gaza-Egypt border fully, so as to break the criminal
imprisonment of the Gazan people from his side, let alone break
diplomatic relations with Israel for its massacre in Gaza.

[12]
El Baradei was outed by Mamdouh Hamza, a prominent member of
ElBaradei's own National Front for Change, as “having strong
ties to Zionist institutions” and sitting directly on the
board of trustees of George Soros' International Crisis
Group; see Tony Cartalucci, “ElBaradei Outed by Own Movement
as Western Stooge,” Land Destroyer (1/12/2011).

[21]Fawaz A Gerges: “This Brotherhood has a real sense of
purpose,” The Independent (7/2/2011).

[22]Jack Shenker & Brian Whitaker, “A rare glimpse into the
world of the Muslim Brotherhood,” The Guardian
(9/2/2011).

[23]
Lizzie Phelan, “History of the Muslim Brotherhood's
collusion in Palestine” in Robert Dreyfuss's book Devils
Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist
Islam (Metropolitan Books, 2006/2008),pp. 58 –
64.